Insane Co-Worker Stories

One of the Millwrights on my shift had so many piercings in his face, I'm not sure I saw every one of them. He would show up to work with checkered hair, or occasionally shave his head so you could see about a 4" diameter tattoo that looked like the Mortal combat symbol right on the top of his head. He had a really round head, with bug-eyes that really stuck out and wasn't in particularly good shape.

We were taking a training course in rural Illinois. One night after dinner we head out to the bar. Buddy says, I'll meet you guys there. About an hour later, he comes into the redneck bar, full shrapnel in his face, shaved head, wearing a kilt, with a "what are you guys looking at?" look on his face.

In the same year, the supervisor of that department once got so drunk at a company golf tournament that, among other things, was shouting obscenities while peeing over the railing in the middle of the clubhouse restaurant. When the company GM tied to stop him, he started licking his face and trying to kiss him.

It was a really fun place to work.

Anyone remember hearing about this story?

[EDIT]Synopsis: Navy Submarine captain fakes his own death as a way to break up with his mistress, gets caught, removed from command, and then discharged from the Navy.

I served with him on the USS Ustafish (we were both department heads). I have some stories, but none are good as the biggie that he did years later, and really none that I feel the need to post here now.

Bill was our in-department IT guy. It was Bill's job to make sure our group of Macs ran well. Unfortunately Bill decided the way to do this was to lock all our computers down and treat us like children. This did not sit well with most of the seasoned graphic designers who had quite happily maintained their own computers for years. No, Bill installed spy software to keep tabs on us and would occasionally remote into our machines to watch us work. Unfortunately Bill wasn't as slick as he thought and forgot to change the emergency admin password for his little spy program. I went around and unlocked everyone's computers and we all kept our mouths shut.

Fast forward a few months and an ashen faced Bill is being escorted around the office by our warehouse foreman. Seems Bill had been running a file sharing service on the company T1 line and storing GIGS of "personal" data on the company computers. This was back when a gig of data was a ton of space. Bill was being escorted around to unlock each computer before he was allowed to leave. The look on his face was priceless as he wandered from Mac to Mac, only to find his software already disabled. When he got to my machine I told him it was good practice to change ALL software passwords, even the emergency admin.

This story is not mine but a story an old boss told me about his adopted son:

The son worked at a car dealership as a technician. One of the salesman at the store was in a bad place financially and was going around trying to borrow money from coworkers, the son took pity upon him and loaned him $300. Weeks went by and the timeframe promised for return of the money came and went. The son asked for the money back and the salesman gave excuses for a while, then after being asked several times the salesman finally said "Berk you, I'm not paying you back". The son came in to work the next day with a bottle of accelerant of some sort and lit the salesman on fire in the showroom, then proceeded to spray accelerant on the flaming salesman who reportedly ran around the showroom screaming and trying to stop drop and roll to no avail. Last I heard, the son was in prison.

Thanks for the stories.

This one isn't quite as good, but it is the most family friendly one I have.

Many moons ago, I worked at a pizza place in upstate NY. One of the drivers was a longshoreman at the port of Albany during the day, and picked up a few shifts to make some extra cash. He always had a longshoreman's hook in his truck (google it), except his was a custom job he'd made himself, and was all metal. He wasn't very tall, but he was about three feet across from his shoulders down to his hips. He'd been doing that work since he was a teenager and was probably the strongest guy I ever knew, even though he didn't look particularly fit.

Well, one day it snows like crazy and the ploughs do their regular stunk of burying any car on the wrong side of the road as much as they could. Being in a college part of town, there were quite a few cars buried. The roads cleared up enough by evening for us to send the drivers out. This guy goes out on a few deliveries, but then says he is going home, he's made enough money for the day. Apparently he stopped and helped a few people get their cars out of snowbanks using the hook for $10 a pop. He apparently just lifted them by the bumpers and pivoted them until the wheels were on sold ground. By himself. I'm sure the snow and ice helped slide them a bit, but still.

I hired a mechanic a few years ago, who told me he wanted out of the oilfield work he had been doing because he was standing beside a guy who was killed by a broken cable whipping through him. Sounds reasonable. He wasn't a bad tech, but very seldom worked a full week- always some emergency with his exwife or kids, or grandmother...It started to get old after a while.

One day, he takes an unreasonably long time to come back from collecting a part at the local Chev dealer, I question, he tells me about the parts guy wandering...Whatever. Next day, he comes to work in the morning, but doesn't come back after lunch. Day 3, he phones in to tell how his exwifes new husband came to drop off the daughter at lunch, and they got in a fight and he is in jail. Day 4, his toolbox is gone, this key is on the front counter along with a note all about how thankful he was for the opportunity I'd given him, and sadly, he had to leave town because of the police issue. 10:00am, still day 4, I'm at the Chev dealer he had been slow coming back from on day 1, (which is less than 3 blocks from the shop) and the parts guys asks me, "Hey, Jim, how come we have one of your techs working here now?"

"Uhhhmmm, jail. Yeah, That's the ticket. Jail. Yeah."

I had a new tech show up at 7:30 on a Monday morning, nothing weird about that except the service director was famous for hiring people and not telling his shop dispatcher (me). I got him a time card, showed him where to clock in and showed him his stalls. RO's were piling up in my office so I headed over there to assign work.

About 8:45 another of my techs says 'looks like your new boy is gone'. Huh? So I head out of the office and over to the stall, sure enough he's gone. I go to the time clock, he had clocked out at approximately 8:20 and wrote 'I QUIT' across his time card.

Then there was the guy everybody called 'James Brown' because I swear he was a dead ringer for him; ringlets etc. His stall was right across from my office, one day he was standing under a Century with the cherry red wrench in his hands. I walked over and made a joke about 'you have pulled the carpet back, right?' and he gave me a 'go away stupid' look. Okey dokey. So I am doing paperwork in the office, look up and THE DAMN CAR IS ON FIRE INSIDE. We got the car down and put out the fire, the inside was a mess. He was given the choice of fixing the car on his time and at his expense or paying the $1,000.00 deductible. He took Option 1; I never would have. I did catch him smearing silicone sealant on some wires he had separated in lieu of replacing the harness; that got him hauled into the dealer principal's office and some law being laid down. Once he got the car fixed, he worked there another two weeks or so then quit, saying he wasn't making enough money. I have no idea where he wound up.